Our oil addiction.

Today the UK government decided to allow oil company Chevron to carry out deepwater drilling for oil in the sea west of Shetland.

This decision was made in spite of the following factors:

- yesterday the EU is planning a moratorium on all deepwater drilling for oil in light of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. (Hence, one suspects, the rusging through of this decision).

- Enquiries into the Horizon disaster are still ongoing, which means that new drilling off Shetland will be carried out with the same exacting safety standards as were in place there. The industry is as yet offering no further reassurances or safeguards. Meanwhile, the environmental cost in the Gulf can still not be measured as damage is still being done.

- If the world's existing supplies of oil and gas were used up, the world would still exceed targets set for reducing emissions and climate targets the UK (and Scottish) government claims to be committed too. Surely efforts should now be put into the development of greener technologies to help the world when fossil fuels run out, rather than looking for more oil. We need to plan for this change now.

This is also an issue where Alex Salmond finds himself in bed with the coalition. When pressed yesterday he refused to back the EU moratorium, preferring to leave the door open to deepwater drilling. This despite his recent trumpeting of Scotland becoming 100% renewable. I suspect that at the end of the day the SNP needs the oil industry too much in order to make the economic case for independance and that will stop them ever fully embracing an environmental agenda.